I had the pleasure of a visit from Zed Shah recently. We'd been in touch for a couple of months about filming a spoon carving video for his YouTube channel, Zed Outdoors. His videos, there are about 150 of them, have over 8 millions views and feature some of the finest bushcrafters and green woodworkers in the country so I was honoured (and quite surprised!) when he asked if he could film me demonstrating my method.
We also filmed a short demonstration of how I decorate my spoons using milk paint. I'm no expert when it comes to milk paint so this isn't very in-depth, but over time I've found a way that has worked well for me. There aren't very many videos about milk paint online so hopefully this will be a good starting point for anyone wanting to try it for themselves.
The great things about spoon carving is that there's no 'right' way of doing it. As long as you work in a safe way and you end up with a spoon, you're doing pretty well! So I hope that people watching this can take something away from it that will improve their own carving in the same way I have from Zed's other videos.
When I was starting out, I used to take ages to draw my outline freehand and it would still turn completely wonky, so I found templates a very useful way to quickly get the shape I want and remove some frustration! As you'll see in the video, I don't use templates any more for eating spoons but if I'm making a batch of a certain design, a template really speeds up the process.
So I have also made a spoon template, based on the one I carve in the video.
Click on the picture to the right to open the link and make sure to print on A4 paper to get the right size. I recommend then transferring the template on to a flexible piece of plastic (a plastic milk bottle is ideal), which is easier to draw around than paper. It's also useful to be able to see the grain on the wood through the plastic.
I'd love to see any spoons made from this template, send me photos or tag me in any social media posts!
I hope you enjoy the videos!